Credence
by Road Rhythm
Summary: So maybe Dean has a thing for Sam when he's asleep. So maybe he just likes it when Sam's that little bit more easy, that little bit more trusting, that little bit more open. Sue him. It's not like Dean's going to take advantage, so where's the harm if he likes knowing that he could?


**A/N:** Enormous thanks to my betas Lavishsqualor and Sleepypercy, who have been very generous with their time.

 **Warnings (spoilers)** : Wincest, consensual drugging and somnophilia, dubcon drinking, non-sexual but noncon touching, non-sexual but noncon drugging, undernegotiated kink, edgeplay. All sex is consensual but involves a character voluntarily putting himself in a situation where he cannot revoke consent.

As always, the situations portrayed here are _not intended as an imitable guide of any kind._ Do not do the things.

* * *

. . . . .

* * *

They're not in time to save the girl. They're nowhere near in time to save the girl.

Someone stole an amulet from a small university museum outside of Vermillion, Minnesota. News of the theft made its way along the tendrils joining the anthropological world to hunters', all the way down to a friend of a friend of Caleb Blackner, and finally to Dean and Sam. When two strapping young officers from the State Police took sudden interest in the case, the museum was happy to share its high-quality cataloguing photos. They showed the totem of a dream demon. It had quite the cult, once upon a time. Summoning this dream demon, the lore says, requires a vessel.

One of the grad students hasn't been to class in over a week. Her name is Talia Olson.

They break into her apartment. Sam picks the lock, as deft as if he hasn't taken nearly four years off. Maybe he didn't, from this. Dean's right behind him as they move in, weapons at the ready, but the apartment's ordinary: dull living room, cramped kitchen, and exactly the furnishings you'd expect from a twenty-something working on an MA in anthropology and folklore. There are no bloodstains, no broken lamps, no busted locks. No signs of a struggle or a reconstructionist cult kidnapping. They step carefully over the DVDs and dishes dotted on the floor, but the owner never appears to challenge them.

When they get to the bedroom, it's apparent why.

She's on top of the covers, wearing the sort of flowing nightgown Dean didn't think they really sold outside of movies. Under her folded hands, a dead rose is starting to mildew. There's a horrible smell of urine and feces. She looks peaceful. The amulet looks out of place around her neck.

Her stomach is grossly distended.

Sam isn't looking at her, though. Dean follows his gaze to the wall. It's covered in pictures. Completely covered. Posters, paintings, prints, greeting cards, colored-in coloring book pages, computer printouts, magazine photoshoots, pages cut out of books, napkin doodles, bad sketches torn out of notebooks. Most arresting is a Disney poster displayed over the dresser, showing a fire-breathing dragon, a fairytale castle, and a creepy Ken doll-type hovering over an unconscious blonde. The poster's many rips and creases have been carefully mended and reinforced. _Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty_. That must have been the first.

Beside it is a pre-Raphaelite print of a woman on what looks more like a bier than a bed, laid out rather than lying. Beside that, one of a woman in a filmy nightdress like Talia's wearing, half on her side, a rosebush climbing over the blankets on her lap. Half-hidden under it, one of a girl with black hair dead asleep in a circle of grieving dwarves, apple still in her hand. A woodcut of a girl on a mountain of pillows, lips open, eyes shut. A computer-rendered girl with massive breasts and an inadequate bodice, out cold on a couch with her legs slightly spread. A girl flat on her back in a folk costume on a bed bounded by thorns, a newborn sucking on each hand. A girl asleep in a puddle of petals like blood. A girl in a glass coffin. And another girl in another. The same girl a hundred times. Thousands of versions altogether, crawling out over the walls from that one nucleic image like kudzu. Dean's familiar with the folklore, sanitized and otherwise; it comes with the job. But he would never have guessed there are so many different pictures of it.

They thought they were looking for an abductor, maybe several, concerned about a possible cult. They never thought to look for a willing host acting on her own.

Sam is very white when he looks up. "We have to get it out of her."

Dean looks at her stomach. Under the skin, something moves. "I'm not sure we can."

Sam opens his mouth to argue, and the window explodes.

Dean hits the dresser head first, so his experience of events gets choppy after that. They're no longer alone, but it won't be until later that he has the faculties to be pissed at himself for not considering that something else might be looking for the same thing they were. There's fire, and pain, and Sam crawling across the floor and taking something off the girl, and enough confusion for a mythological family tree— _hah_ , more like vines, thorny, unstoppable, get in anywhere, you think you're building a good, sturdy castle to lock your comatose daughter up in, and here comes a fucking rosebush through the window, just like that one on the wall over Dean's head—

The fire takes out half the apartment complex. In a way, this is lucky, because no one recovers enough of Talia Olsen to identify her by anything other than dental records. Sam and Dean spend a week trying to track or at least identify whatever followed them to the amulet, unsuccessfully. Sam managed to destroy the ugly thing in all the mayhem, so perhaps it doesn't matter.

Life goes on.

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a boy who liked cough syrup.

Sam coughs into his pillow and groans. He's gross when he gets sick, gross and whiny, but that cherry knockoff Nyquil has always been good for settling him down. Dean pours him another dose. Maybe it's two doses. He's just sort of eyeballing it in the Dixie cup from the motel bathroom. "Drink that," he says.

Sam cracks an eye open. "Already took some."

"Take some more."

Sam does. He loves that crap; you barely have to give him an excuse. Later on, when he's out like a light, Dean will rub his back and watch a Chuck Norris marathon, but for right now, he has to at least go through the motions of looking for a job even if it's obvious that they won't be doing anything for at least a week. He goes back to the laptop.

Sam's pupils are inky-huge where he's watching him. "Dean."

"Yeah."

"'M bored."

"Are you kidding me right now?"

Sam shakes his head, cheek rubbing the pillow. He's on his side with his hair in his face, staring at Dean. His lips are stained a little with the cough syrup.

Dean tosses him the remote. Sam could catch it, he's not as loopy as he's acting, but he just lets it _whumpf_ onto the comforter. "Watch some cartoons," Dean tells him. "Grownups have to work."

Sam snorts. "Yeah, you look like you're up to your eyeballs in it. Hey, Dean?"

Dean sighs. "What?"

"You wanna?"

His cock goes to half-mast just at the suggestion. Fucking Sam. And, well. Fucking Sam. "You're like a walking spent Kleenex right now. Think I'll just beat it in the shower, thanks. In a hazmat suit."

It's uncommon for Sam to be this blunt, because usually when he wants to fuck Dean he'll suppress it for weeks until it boils over from a fight or something, and they can both pretend it's just about relieving pressure. So Dean's a little thrown, and that's why he's so quick to dismiss it, he supposes.

Sam shrugs. "Whatever." He turns over, onto his belly, arms going up and around the pillow as he sighs out. The covers are rucked around his waist. They move as he tosses and squirms to get settled, winding up caught so his ass is barely covered.

Little shit.

They might (occasionally) be fucking, but it's not like Dean finds Sam particularly attractive. He's his brother. His nose is too big and his lips are too thin, and every year it seems like there's more bone pushing out of his face, making it more intent and irritating. His voice is even more annoying, pitched as it always is for maximum earnest sincerity. His posture's crap, his attitude is crap, and he's his _brother_. So whatever you might want to call Dean's habit of recording every last zit on his chin, it's not lovesick.

Sam's always been kind of charming in his sleep, though. Thrashing nightmares aside, anyway, but that's kind of like a genetic condition. Dean doesn't keep a scrapbook, or anything, but if he had to guess, he'd say the top five most endearing moments of Sam's life were spent unconscious. It softens the harshest planes of his face, which makes him kind of handsome, from the right angle; and he looks younger, which makes it easier to justify how much crap Dean lets him get away with. When they were little and Dad was getting the stink-eye from some suspicious librarian or motel manager, all Dean had to do was come up behind with Sam zonked in his arms, and all sorts of trust issues would be magically gone. Dean won't even talk about how many of their own fights have failed to endure not because anything got resolved, but because having Sam passed out right next to him with that dumb frown on his face makes it hard to stay mad.

It isn't long before the cough syrup puts him under and Dean can turn off the laptop and turn on _Good Guys Wear Black_ , sitting on the empty side of Sam's bed. He does rub Sam's back, but only when he coughs, so that's fine.

Sick Sam may be whiny, and gross, but he also sleeps hard, sluggish when he turns over toward Dean and snuffles. His pallor brings out the pink high in his cheeks and the tip of his nose. He's sick, but only a little sick, normal-sick, in that way that emphasizes the vigor and health underneath.

Fever still turns him into a radiator, though, so Dean retreats to his own bed round about the time John T. Booker is putting a flying kick through the windshield of a '77 Celica and lets himself be lulled to sleep by the soothing duet of Sam's phlegm-thickened breath and Chuck Norris breaking things. He wakes up, once, around three a.m.

Sam's looking right at him.

* * *

Life goes on some more. But not for everyone.

Dean listens to Sam sermonize about _what Dad would want_ , about _carrying on Dad's legacy_ , about last wishes and duty and all kinds of other garbage, and every word makes Dean's blood boil. He wants to hit Sam. He wants to beat his fucking face in. He wants to grab him and scream, _You don't know shit about his last wishes._

He isn't sure it's Sam he wants to hit.

They have a blow-out, Sam backs off with the thirteenth-hour hypocrisy, and it's quieter. At first, Dean's relieved. Dean's an idiot. The quiet just lets him hear his father's last words on repeat, scratching out their groove a little deeper every day. For whatever reason, he finds himself thinking of that girl who tried to summon a dream demon, the one obsessed with Sleeping Beauty. He thinks of incubating secrets eating their hosts from the inside out, changing, growing, moving. Unseen things waiting to escape.

Sam gets it all out of him before winter. It was inevitable, really. Predictable.

And life goes on, whether Dean likes it or not.

* * *

Dean takes Sam to a bar.

What happened to Ava was messed up. Dean doesn't dispute that, but Sam's moped long enough. Their dance card was full before she ever came to town; they need to get back to it. And the fact is, the quickest way to get Sam out of a rut is to get him blitzed.

So, yeah, Dean gets Sam drunk, but it's for his own good.

Three rounds of beer will take Sam past buzzed and well along his way to tipsy. From there, when you propose shots, he'll still put up a token resistance, but he'll be feeling good enough to want them and unlatched enough for the wanting to show. You barely have to do anything, after that. Once you get the first volley of the hard stuff into him, the only difficult part is keeping him upright at all, because given scope, Sam turns into the Jägerbomb Monster.

Easy-peasy.

Sam, the dumbass, doesn't even know he's drunk until he goes to stand, but Dean's ready for it. Sam's as predictable as politics when you know him. "Whoa, easy, there, Jerry Lee." Dean catches Sam with one hand, Sam's chair with the other. "You, my brother, are a lightweight."

Anyone who's had as much as Sam has would be drunk if not passed out by now, actually. But it's been over an hour since he had the wherewithal to notice that Dean hasn't been keeping pace.

Sam pats his shoulder, like Dean wasn't the only thing standing between him and the floor a second ago. "Relax. Just hitting the head."

Dean snorts. "Yeah, probably, the way you're going."

Just to be contrary, Sam straightens and aims himself at the men's room with surprising steadiness. "We should head out soon," he says, like the buzzkill is programmed too deep into him for alcohol to touch. He starts off.

His jacket trails through Dean's grasp until Dean lets the material fall from his hand. "Yeah, okay," Dean says. "I'll go settle up."

Dean keeps track of everyone who enters and exits the men's room while he pays the tab and Sam does his business. Nobody's in there too long, nobody looks possessed, and practically speaking, nobody wants to mess with a guy Sam's size, anyway. Not unless they know he's half a suggestion away from a booze-nap, know how easy and sweet he'll spill all over the mattress, and Dean's the only one who does.

Dean's already waiting for him when Sam walks right past their table. He'd keep going, too, following some scent trail from the kitchen, but Dean reaches out and snags his shirttail.

Sam's face lights up. "Dean! Hey!"

Dean rolls his eyes and tugs. Sam goes with molasses grace that he can only dream of while sober, yards and yards of him spilling into the chair. Most people slouch when they're drunk, and so does Sam, but somehow it's also almost the only time you get a sense of his true height. (Dean notices these things. Someone has to.)

It takes a moment for Sam to register the items on the table. "I thought we were leaving."

"This is just one more for the road." Dean hands him the shot and clinks him. "To the hangover you're gonna have tomorrow."

After a second, Sam grins, toothy and crinkle-eyed. "Yeah, okay," he says, and tosses it back.

Five minutes later, Sam is sloppy all over him in the parking lot. All the hell over. He's petting at Dean's chest, and his beer breath washes down Dean's face where he's mushing his forehead into Dean's hair. There's a gauntlet of bikes and bike-owners between them and the car, and he laughs that stupid, jackass heehaw of his when Dean stubs his toe trying to steer them through it. A retaliatory elbow to the ribs has no effect; Sam just rolls his forehead against Dean's skull like he's lost in the texture. His fingertips find the skin above Dean's waistband and get enchanted with that. How obvious Sam's being would be enough to make Dean nervous, if he weren't a little buzzed himself.

Dean thinks for a moment of what this would look like if Sam were a girl, if he weren't six-foot-four, ten pounds heavier than Dean, and his brother. They're getting some looks from the Hells Angels types as it is.

It's not like Dean's going to do anything, and it's not hurting anyone if he likes knowing that he could.

Sam stumbles, then yelps and squirms when the hand Dean catches him with winds up underneath his shirt. Always was ticklish. "You got me drunk," he says, and hiccoughs.

Dean puts Sam's arm over his shoulder. "I think I had some help."

Sam's voice is dark, filtered through all the whiskey. "I know you did."

He turns and suddenly he's pressed right into Dean, mouth somewhere around Dean's shirt collar and one enormous hand spanning Dean's back, his other arm still locked around Dean's neck. The way his knees buckle as he clutches at him makes Dean think that the contact may actually be innocent, but he still hurries them into the dark before a knot of shaved heads can finish turning.

It'd help if Sam would shut up. "Thank you," he mumbles into Dean's shoulder. "Thank you. Thanks."

That just reminds Dean of the last time Sam got plastered, which in turn makes him want to put his fist in Sam's face. "Yeah, yeah. Stop drooling on me, or next time I'll let you take the header."

Sam's teeth are white in the dark. " _Header_." The pun sets him off giggling again.

By the time they make it to the car, Sam's hips are making these slow, unconscious rolls against Dean's side in time with the Alice Cooper pumping out of the bar at their backs. Dean does his best not to react to it while he catalogues the smells on him: sweat; smoke; several kinds of alcohol; hand sanitizer that he must have _brought with him_ , good grief; potato skins; the deodorant they share. Then Sam puts his hand right over Dean's crotch, and maybe all the touchy-feely isn't as innocent as he thought.

Dean propels him toward the car, fast enough that Sam nearly loses his footing. He props him against the passenger side door. "All right, all right, just cool it, Romeo."

"Why?"

"Because the one-percenters back there don't even look like they're real open-minded about interracial dating, never mind whatever the hell you are." From the bar's open door, Alice Cooper wails into the night about the poison running through his veins. Dean shifts his grip on Sam's arm, holding him steady against the car. Feeling the pulse under his thumb. "Could you even get it up right now?"

Sam looks right at him and says, "I dunno. Maybe not."

Holding himself taut, Dean reaches past him to put the key in the lock. "Twenty bucks says you'd fall asleep on me halfway through."

Sam's tongue touches his bottom lip, barely, a tiny flicker in the dark. "Might."

Dean's fingers clamp down by reflex. Now he feels not pulse but bone. "Get in the goddamned car, Sam," he says.

Sam straightens until Dean can feel every inch of height he has over him. Without a word, he pulls on the door latch and waits until Dean steps back far enough for him to open it.

Guilt starts working on Dean before he even makes it around to his side of the car. Not because Sam's wounded by his little display; Sam seems about as unwounded as it is possible to be, and that, in itself, seems like some kind of accusation. Dean sneaks a look at him through the window. Sam is now trying to clean the logo off the dashboard by wetting his thumb repeatedly on his tongue and rubbing. Dean rolls his eyes and gets in.

Sam shifts in the passenger seat. Dean flips on the radio and turns onto the highway. Sam rolls his forehead against the window, draws in the fog his breath leaves. Jim Morrison calls all aboard the crystal ship. One of Sam's hands kneads at his thigh as he lounges against the door, hips flexing up under his seatbelt. The road is mercifully empty. Sam slips into a doze with his mouth open and a hand halfway down his pants. Dean isn't watching any of this.

The forward jolt as the car stops in front of their room has Sam groaning awake. Dean opens his mouth to make a crack at his expense, but what he says instead is, "Oh, _hell,_ no," and he lunges across the seat to get the passenger door open and Sam's head out of it.

"Augh," Sam says when he's finished.

Dean lets go of his collar and comes around to collect him. "You're disgusting, you know that?"

"You're the one who got me drunk."

Juggling his brother and the room door, Dean says, "Tell me something half that bar doesn't know."

"You got me drunk on purpose."

Dean toes the door shut and finds the light switch. "Yeah? When'd you figure that one out, Dr. Hawking?"

Sam lets Dean walk him over to the far bed and provides no help at all as Dean goes to work getting him out of his jacket. He leans in like a child telling a secret. His breath could strip paint. "The first time, Dean."

Dean pauses. Then he yanks the jacket the rest of the way down his brother's arms and drops him on the mattress. "I'm not drunk enough for this."

"I am."

Dean's cock is a hard line in his jeans. He ignores it and Sam to rummage first in his duffel, then in the cooler, and comes back and thumps a bottle of water down on the nightstand. "Start drinking," he tells Sam. The Jack Daniels he deposits a little more carefully on his own side. "Not from this one. I mean it, don't you fall asleep without drinking that, your breath is evil."

Sam flips him a lazy finger from the bed.

Safe in the bathroom, Dean pisses, painfully, manages to get his pants closed again, and splashes water over his face. He stares at the basin for a while, rinses his face one more time, and goes back out into the room.

He catches Sam hastily screwing the cap back on the JD. Dean snatches it away from him. "Brother, you are a glutton for punishment."

"Must be, I keep hanging around your ass."

He's slurring, finally. Won't be long now. Dean reopens the whiskey, takes a swig, and grimaces. He could swear this stuff gets worse every time. Sam watches him between long, slow blinks where he lies half-facing Dean, legs still hanging over the side of the bed, jeans twisted. His breaths are deepening and evening out. Dean takes another swallow straight from the bottle, then another, then another.

Sam's eyelids lose the battle against gravity.

The room tilts when Dean leans across to prod Sam's temple. His head rocks under the pressure. Dean sets down the Jack, bends to scoop up Sam's legs, and slaps lightly at his face until he rouses enough to take some of the water, backs off when he starts to choke on it. Then Dean sits back down on the edge of his own bed and has another pull. He lets the liquor roll around his mouth this time, numbing up his gums.

Sam wouldn't wake up at this point if a bomb went off. Something could come through the window, throw a block party, do its laundry, and waste them both, and Sam would never be any the wiser. He has at least three weapons within reach, but he's defenseless. They have no reason to expect anything to come after them just now, but if something did, they would most assuredly die.

Dean reaches down to pry his own shoes off and then stands, mostly steady. Sam's breathing has shifted into the heavy rhythm of the very, very intoxicated. After rolling him onto his front to make it easier to pull off his overshirt, he takes off Sam's shoes and untangles his legs enough to remove his jeans. When his boxers catch in the waistband, Dean holds them conscientiously in place to keep them from slipping.

Dean pictures how Sam sacked out the last time he got this drunk. His memories from that part of their stay at the Pierpont Inn are quite detailed. Working slowly, as if there were some chance of waking him up, Dean moves Sam's arms over his head, one to embrace the thin pillow, the other to the switchblade under it. Sam went under peacefully that night, once he got what he wanted. Happy. Sated. His pelvis was tilted further back than this; Dean picks up the overshirt he discarded and stuffs it under Sam's hips.

Dean started drinking to keep his dad company. Sixteen was old enough to take on a werewolf, John had told him, so it was old enough to enjoy a cold one if he wanted. Just another thing their family did that other people could never understand. Except Sam's never kept _him_ company that way; if Dean's going to get drunk, Sam stays puritanically sober; if Dean's entirely and professionally dry, well, then, it's time to get drunk. Whatever Dean does, Sam has to go as far as possible in the opposite direction.

He makes a soft, protesting noise when Dean turns him right side up, but his eyelids barely flicker. Guiding one of Sam's hands up to the pillow beside his cheek, Dean pulls Sam's long legs up until he's sleeping curled loosely on his side. The way he used to. Dean repositions Sam's head, carefully closing his mouth. Doesn't work. Sam sighs in his sleep and his lips part. Dean closes them. They open.

Belatedly, Dean decides that he needs to change the lights. Blackness swirls through his head when he stands, and crossing to the light switch seems to take a very long time. It occurs to him that what he's had really shouldn't be enough to affect him this much when he gropes for the bedside lamp and takes several tries to turn it on.

It's a lot better this way. The low light throws all the bizarre angles of Sam's long, pointed face into relief, and there are shadows in the fold of his stomach, between his loosely curved fingers, along the vein on his arm.

He remembers Sam with the cough syrup last time he got sick, how flushed up and pretty he'd been. Fairytale pretty.

Dean's never gone any further than this.

He sits on the end of Sam's bed and picks up one of his feet. His socks are really, really white. Sam bleaches the hell out of anything he can. Dean peels the sock off and holds the foot in his hand, rubbing his thumb along the arch while he considers how incredibly stupid Sam looks with nostrils that size.

Recovery position. Before he goes to bed, he should put Sam in the recovery position and make sure his airway is clear.

Sam's mouth is slack when Dean presses two fingers inside. Sam hiccoughs a bit and his eyelids flutter, but Dean goes slowly, just like he used to when Sam was a baby. He lets the pads of his fingers rest against Sam's teeth until they open for him with the natural rhythms of his breathing and Dean can push forward to touch Sam's tongue without triggering his gag reflex. It's hot and soft. As he withdraws, Dean paints over Sam's lips to make them shine.

An ache that makes him forget his hard-on washes up in him. With infinite care, he positions Sam on his side at the very edge of the mattress, arm's reach from Dean's. "Close your eyes, Sammy," he whispers. Or maybe not. His head is very blurry. "Just close your eyes."

Sam mutters and extends one arm fractionally into the gap between the beds.

Dean fumbles the cap back on what's left of the whiskey and kills the light. There's something nagging at him, something about Sam—isn't it always?—but it's too much trouble right now. He lies down and lets the spins take him. Through the thin pillow, his gun is hard against his ear.

His last impression, indistinct through different kinds of sickness, is that somehow, he's been had.

* * *

Come morning, he knows how.

He coughs awake on water to find Sam looming over him with an empty cup. He looks like death warmed over. "Good morning," he says, and turns and walks away.

Dean makes it to the toilet, but it's a near thing. His eyes water as his stomach tries to turn itself inside out, more than once. The air seems to pulse around his head. Even his teeth hurt, deep down in bone, like every single root is rotten. He is hungover like he's never been without going toe-to-toe with a monster the night before, and for all that his memories are tinged dark towards the end, he knows he didn't drink as much as this.

Footsteps sound behind him, and a water bottle and a couple of aspirin appear on the floor beside the toilet. Dean gets the water open with shaky hands and takes the aspirin right off the linoleum.

When he emerges into the main room, he can smell coffee brewing but he isn't even tempted. His mouth is parched. Sam, thank God, has already done battle with daylight, stretching the drape tight over the window and nailing the fucker down with a tactical knife. Dim as it is, he still lies with the crook of his elbow over his eyes. His forearm is ringed with purple in the shape of four fingers and a thumb. Dean crawls back onto his own bed and wallows in agony.

The mechanics of what happened to him he already put together between his third and fourth heaves, but his sense of being wrong-footed only continues to grow. "Dude," he asks when it can't be put off any longer, "did you roofie me?"

Sam's voice is thick where it comes from the other bed. "Depends."

"No, it does not depend. What does it depend on?"

"If you're using 'roofie' as short for 'rohypnol,' then no, of course not."

"I'm using 'roofie' as short for 'spiking my goddamned drink.'"

"Oh. Then yes."

Silence prevails for a good while.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

" _Why_ did you roofie me?"

Because there is nothing on Earth that he could have done with it. Not even just looked. Dean saw to that, and if Sam wanted him to be sorry for it, well, round two to Sam.

"I just wanted you to have a headache as bad as mine for this conversation," Sam says eventually.

"What conversation?"

Fabric rustles. Dean opens his eyes to find Sam turned onto his side, looking right at him.

"Oh." The conversation about how Dean getting Sam drunk has been something of a trend, and about how it turns out Sam's known all about it from the jump. Has known, maybe, for a lot longer than Dean. Right. "That conversation."

It's the dumbest thing Dean's ever heard, of course, and he's going to murder his brother as soon as he can cross the room, but that's Sam for you. Twisted logic at the best of times. Get him drunk and all bets are off. While you're distracted by how stupid and impossibly arousing he looks when he's too intoxicated to even get it up, he'll be fucking _drugging_ _you_ , because Sam is predictable right up until he isn't.

Dean plays for time. "Look, I'm sorry for your hangover, okay?" He is. He thinks Sam underestimates how much he is. "I just wanted to get you to quit brooding for five minutes. You can't keep doing this, man, it's not healthy."

Even now, after all, there is no guarantee that this is going to be about anything Dean did. Or anything Dean has a habit of doing. It could be something less than a worst case scenario for a change. It could be about Ava, or about Andy, or about the demon, which all is inevitably about Sam (what isn't); or about how Dean is shutting him out, because obviously Dean has to share the contents of his head the way he always had to share his toys; or about how he can't use booze or fighting or even incest to ignore what Dad told him forever. But what he gets is:

"I jerk off to it."

Dean picks through the shrapnel in his head looking for the sense in that. "Excuse me?"

"The idea of it, I mean. Someone using me while I can't do anything about it. If that helps any."

It sounds like a change of subject, but Dean knows perfectly well that he isn't that lucky and apparently he isn't half that sly. He tries to wet his lips with a dry tongue. "You mean like a rape fantasy?"

"No. Sort of. Maybe. No."

"Well, that's helpful."

"I don't get off on something happening against my will. I just like the idea of not being able to stop it."

Dean feels like he woke up in the blood of a crime scene he only dreamt that he'd cleaned. His mind spins its wheels trying to figure out what gave him away, what evidence he left behind on the body (his brother's), how much Sam can possibly remember. How far back he first slipped. This has to be a trap. Dean knows spank-bank fantasies like the one Sam just dropped on him. They're metaphors. They're preposterous. You don't do them.

"Have you ever done it?"

Let him say yes. Just let him. Dean knows how to congratulate him for it and leave him destroyed.

"No."

Thank God. Thank God.

A particularly vicious throb stabs through Dean's eye. "What in the hell did you use on me, anyway?" he croaks.

"Benadryl." Something flickers across Sam's face: concern, which Dean doesn't want, but not guilt, which he does. "Are you—?"

"I'll live." The water bottle's empty and Dean's still cotton-mouthed. Also there's the drill bit boring into in his head. "So is this how— When you— If you ever did it, with someone, is this what you would—?"

"Um. No. I guess not. It was just, I was drunk, and it was there. Seemed like a good idea at the time, you know?" That's probably the closest thing Dean's going to get to an apology. Then again, perhaps it's as much of one as he deserves. After several seconds, Sam goes on. "I guess I'd use Valium. Or Ativan, or something."

And because Dean is very interested in the details of this particular fantasy of his brother's, he asks, "Why?"

"Well, because of _this_ , for starters. But mainly to—make sure."

Dean doesn't answer that. He can't.

"Dean?"

There's uncertainty on Sam's face. Like despite sitting there saying things custom-machined to fuck Dean up irreparably, he's unsure of his reception.

"This doesn't have to be a thing," Sam says, with a trace of desperation.

In Talia Olsen's apartment, just before it went up, one picture had impressed itself on Dean's memory. Thematically it seemed different from the rest of the crazy papering the walls, and he found himself image-searching the features he could remember: bearded dude in a helmet with wings, chick falling asleep in one of those pointy Madonna cone bras, fire. It wasn't a lot to go on, but he couldn't google the trust on her face, or the gentleness of the kiss Beardy pressed to her forehead. After failure upon failure, Dean remembered that the girl had been armed, and that let him find it: _Wotan takes leave of Brunhild_ , according to Wikipedia. Turned out both the fire and the sleep were protections.

"We'd use something like a legitimate doctor would?" he says. "For insomnia, or something? Like, not just something that would get you drunk and passed out; something that would put you to sleep?"

Sam's eyes darken. Dean can't really read what's in them. "Yeah."

Dean's head hurts. It really, really hurts. Higher-level deliberation about things like prudence, or discretion, or morality, are really way the hell too much to ask for. Perhaps that's why finds himself saying, "Okay, then."

* * *

Dean burgles the pharmacy. Sam argued that he should be the one to do it, because, improbably and infuriatingly, he is actually better at it. Dean's the better hustler; Sam's the better thief. Dean has a theory that it's all that time in the straight world, like three years of living in the system gave Sam mystical chosen-one-goes-to-monastery insight into how to game it. Whatever the case, Sam is vain of his skill, and he reads everything into Dean's preemption from a reckless disregard for their current legal situation to an accusation of unreliability. Dean tells him he just wants the practice, _jeez,_ and lets him take point on the finances for a week.

There's some kind of irony in the fact that the times Dean feels like he's married to his brother are never when he's fucking him.

After that, it's just a matter of waiting for the downtime to come around. Sooner or later, they'll pull into a town with no case, and no leads, and they'll check into a motel that's just a shade too nice for them without either one looking at the other.

* * *

Dean turns the prescription bottle over in his hands. Pills rattle against the plastic like glass in a kaleidoscope. "I'm not sure I can do this."

He is acutely aware of Sam's presence in the room. He's always aware of Sam, of course, but it's usually subliminal. This is every shift Sam makes in his chair, every scratch at his knee, every tap on the keyboard and trip to the bathroom grating on Dean's nerves like sand in a sock. He's spent the day reading the same twelve pages without retaining a line and not looking at Sam. Sam's spent the day looking at the laptop and not at Dean.

This might not be the least aroused Dean's ever been, but it is worthy competition.

They haven't talked about it since they agreed to do it. Even when they were knocking over the pharmacy, they discussed the practicalities of the heist but not what it was for. For weeks, the idea has been living in Dean's stomach, suppressed and queasy-hot. It's powered a low-voltage hum that's jolted every time he's caught Sam cutting his gaze away from him, that buzz in his bones that tells him something's going to be _good_. It vanished the moment they checked in here. All the anticipation dropped out of the air, and in place of lamplit mental slideshows Dean found only an outline, in the most banal terms, of the steps presumably to be taken now. Each one seems impossible.

Sam's fingers come to a stop on the keyboard. "I'm not really sure, either."

Dean feels a little twist in his stomach. "Just didn't think it'd be this hard."

"Neither did I," Sam says quietly.

This was Sam's damned idea, though. "You're not supposed to say that. You're supposed to say, I don't know, 'Well, what would make it easier for you?' or something Oprah-approved like that." He's supposed to say, _Please, Dean, I need this_. It isn't always true, but it always works.

Sam glances at him, then. "What would make it easier for you?"

"I—" Dean has no idea. "Could you put the computer away? You're giving me a complex."

Sam does. His expression is unreadable, if it's even there at all. "Screw it," Dean mutters, tossing the pills aside and grabbing the remote.

This isn't working at all. "I need a damned drink." The moment Dean says it he knows that it's true. He wanted to be sober for this, he thought he needed to be, but there's a reason bars play a crucial role in the perpetuation of the species and ten thousand reasons why he and Sam do not ever plan what they do. "God, I need a drink."

Sam sounds a little hopeful. "Do we have anything?"

Dean all but lunges for his duffel. Did he ever replace the bottle Sam contaminated? Please let him have replaced it. Shit. "No."

They could go out, but there'd be no point. If they leave the room now, this is never happening.

The realization stops Dean with a handful of dirty socks in his hand. Sam has put this on the table, this enormous thing that some people willingly go to Hell for, and if they don't get their act together here and now, it will never happen. Maybe that's better. Safer.

For a minute, Sam visibly hesitates. Then he gets up and goes to his own bag. Dean isn't watching for the result, because he already knows Sam doesn't have anything; Dean's always the one who packs the liquor. So he's ignoring Sam entirely when Sam says, "There's this."

He's holding the better part of a bottle of cough syrup.

"…Huh."

While Sam flips through channels, Dean measures red liquid into the plastic cups in the bathroom, half a dose for Sam, a whole one for him. Then he picks up the bottle again and dumps an extra slug into his. He tops both drinks off with water, hands one to Sam, takes a deep swallow, and grimaces. "I cannot believe you actually like this stuff."

"I like cherry," Sam says defensively.

"This is not cherry. This never even met a cherry." Sam shrugs and holds his cup up to the bedside light to view the toxic blush through the plastic. Dean inhales sharply, almost audibly. He doesn't know why it surprises him that this is the moment when he finally feels something stir. Nothing in his screwed up wiring should surprise him anymore. "Hey, Sam?" Sam looks over. Dean clears his throat. "Go slow."

Sam keeps his eyes on Dean as he puts the cup to his lips, drinks, and swallows.

Warmth spreads in Dean's belly. It figures, it just fucking figures, that the sight of his little brother drinking Nyquil gets Dean's engine revving. He takes another swig. The taste is gaggingly medicinal—God only knows how Sam can stand it; though he once caught Sam trying to drink bleach back when he was still in diapers, of course, so you can't go by Sam—but it's certainly doing something. There's a term for the substance they put in it to make you sleepy. Dean ran across it when he was researching what to take from the pharmacy—deliriant. Yeah, that's it. The stuff in cough syrup is a deliriant.

"We don't have to," Sam says. His sips are small and slow, like they need to be if he's going to be able to have anything else. "We could just… have a night cap."

Dean nods. "Turn in early."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

It's not much, the effect of the cough syrup, but it doesn't need to be. They're just getting ready for bed, after all. Right? Right.

Dean finishes his cup; then he lies there and watches Sam pretending to watch the Home Shopping Network until he sets down his empty cup on the clock radio. "Better brush your teeth," Dean tells his brother, which he has not done since Sam was twelve.

The tip of Sam's tongue dissolves a trace of pink from the corner of his mouth. He toys with the cuff of his overshirt while a man in an apron explains the merits of a $99 kettle. Then he looks at Dean, searching his face in a way they usually don't when they're just going to sleep. "You turning in, too?"

Dean's heart skips. "Nah," he manages. "Think I'll stay up a while."

If Sam's pupils are wider than they were a few minutes ago, it's probably just the Nyquil. "Okay."

As soon as the bathroom door latches, Dean kills the TV and goes for the coffee maker. The $99 miracle kettle has given him an idea. This place is nicer than their usual, so they might have—yeah.

A few minutes later, Sam comes out barefoot in a t-shirt and boxers, completely G-rated, and stands between the two beds. The one farthest from the door is as Sam left it: bedspread in place, sheets tacked down tight. The one nearest the door is turned down on the nightstand side, with the extra pillows from the closet mounded and arranged like something out of a picture. Seconds tick by. Finally, after nearly a minute, Sam gets in the second bed.

The white pillows show the faint blush in his cheeks to good effect.

The Ivy Leaf Motel has real mugs with its in-room caffeine service. Dean toes off his shoes with his pulse rabbiting in his neck and plants a knee on the bed to hand one to Sam. Chamomile steams up.

Sam takes the mug and looks from it to his brother. "You made me tea."

"Yeah, you know." Mustering his courage, Dean reaches out and moves a lock of Sam's hair behind his ear. He can see Sam's Adam's apple bob in his throat. "Supposed to be good at bedtime."

Sam gazes into tea. The rising steam stirs the very ends of his hair. "Thanks."

Dean's been rock-hard since he saw his brother's bare feet on the carpet, but underneath the lust, doubt keeps finding its way in. For all that Sam told him, Dean isn't sure what Sam's getting out of this. It wouldn't be the first time that his openness has hidden him better than silence ever could. Not knowing makes Dean uneasy, but not uneasy enough to stop.

"Sam…."

Sam turns the cup in his hands. "Aren't you coming to bed?"

Steam has tickled Sam's throat pink. Before he can even think about it, Dean is shucking his overshirt and jeans and climbing up on top of the covers beside him. He stops himself there. They have got to talk about this. Talking is not usually high up on Dean's list of priorities, especially not with his cock bobbing like a dowsing rod, but they _have_ to talk about this. They should have talked a hell of a long time before this point. "Are you sure about this, Sammy?"

"Yeah." The answer is immediate, but Dean can see the tension in his shoulders. His warm, clean shoulders, a layer away under his sleep shirt.

"All right." Dean swallows. "What do you want?"

"Whatever you want."

"Well, is there anything you don't want?"

"No."

"There has to be something," Dean says uneasily. "No drawing dicks on your forehead, no facials, no Youtubing it, what?"

Sam glances at him, sets the tea down on the nightstand, and picks up the pills. "Nothing."

There's no label on the bottle. Dean swiped a smorgasbord for Sam to choose from: diazepam, lorazepam, alprazolam, zolpidem, promethazine, cyclobenzaprine. Sam puts one shape in his mouth, then another. And another. Dean stops breathing even as more blood moves south. "Sammy—"

Sam looks at him.

Dean's eyes dart from the pills to his brother's face. "Be careful."

Sam washes them down with the tea.

"Gonna brush my teeth," Dean says, and bolts.

In the bathroom, he pulls another prescription bottle out of his toiletries. One pill sits in the bottom. It doesn't really seem possible right now that it'll be any use, not when he can get hard from his brother drinking _tea_ , but this is the sort of opportunity that only comes around once. He can't permit himself to think of it as anything else. His hands are surprisingly steady when he takes the pill.

Sam turns towards him on the pillows when Dean returns and gets in beside him. They've spent a lot of time together in a lot of compromising positions, but never quite like this, never side-by-side in this particular way. It's a little surreal. "Anything yet?" Dean asks.

"Yeah." Sam's quiet. "I'm definitely starting to feel it."

He must be. His eyes are darker, and his movements are just that little bit slower, but there's still that hint of tension in him and finally Dean gets it: Sam's nervous. He's at least as nervous as Dean is, no matter that this was his idea.

Sam nervous is Sam in need of reassurance, and that, that Dean can do. If there's one thing Dean always knows, it's how to take care of his brother.

"C'mere," he tells him.

Sam goes immediately, letting Dean wrap him in a bona fide hug. Ordinarily that would be far beyond the pale, but it's a given here already that they will never speak of this again. Dean presses his nose into the space behind his ear and breathes in deep. He smells clean. He smells like the kind of bedtime that, of the two of them, only Dean ever actually had. Dean opens his mouth over the spot and feels Sam shudder.

"Really starting to feel it, now," Sam mumbles.

Dean slides one hand up his arm and is rewarded by Sam leaning into the touch, slightly enough that he probably doesn't even know he's doing it. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

Haltingly, Sam angles his mouth over Dean's, his fingers curling in Dean's t-shirt. Chamomile, toothpaste, and chemical cherry register when Dean strokes his tongue along Sam's, looking for more of that sleepy taste that's on his skin. When Sam slings one leg over Dean's, Dean feels the weight of his erection fall onto his thigh.

Dean pulls back to stroke his thumbs along Sam's cheekbones. Sam's lids are slow to raise, and his eyes are slow to focus. Tension still lingers in him, but it's drowning under the drugs. The way he sags just a little, arms growing heavy against Dean's chest, wraps as tight around Dean's heart as it does around his dick.

Suddenly Sam brings a hand up to stifle a yawn. "Jesus _Christ,"_ Dean says, and he drops Sam's face to grab his cock instead.

They kiss. They rub. They push their hands up and under clothes and kiss some more. _Heavy petting,_ Dean thinks, and the puerility of the term sends a heavy thrill through him. Bit by bit Sam relaxes, until when he puts a hand through the slit of Dean's underwear to wrap around Dean's erection, he actually gives up a moan, quiet but unrestrained. _Sam_ made that sound. Sam who will chew a hole through his wrist during a blow job sooner than let Dean hear him. The drugs make his fingers clumsy on Dean's cock, and Dean could come just from that.

Sam retracts his hand and pushes himself up to sitting, nearly slipping on the way up. Dean's heart sinks, until Sam says, "Couple more," and picks up the pill bottle again.

That spike in Dean's pulse is alarm, and certainly not anything more. They're taking this too far. He should take the bottle out of Sam's hands and put a stop to everything. He doesn't. He can't. He isn't prepared for this. No version of his fantasies encompassed this combination of terror and want.

Once Sam has taken the pills, Dean intercepts the hand reaching for his boxers again and guides him back against the pillows instead. Sam lets out a shaky breath and lets him. Dean rubs at his shoulders until Sam closes his eyes. They wait.

It's only a couple of minutes before he can feel it hitting Sam. His respiration goes deep, heavy, and he has to struggle to reopen his eyes.

"You can go ahead," he tells Dean. When Dean doesn't, he adds, "I want to feel it happening."

"Oh, fuck me," Dean breathes out, and he rolls Sam under him as he reaches for the lube.

Sam keeps up, at first. He's too weighted down to return Dean's kisses with his usual force, but he opens for them and reaches for Dean's body, seeking his warmth as he slips deeper. Bit by bit, though, he loses coordination and comprehension.

Carefully, as if this drowsiness were as fragile as the real thing, as if Sam were as young as he looks this way and might rouse and ask his big brother what's going on, Dean eases the covers off them. "You ready for bed, champ?" he murmurs into Sam's mouth.

Sam just blinks at him, like he heard but didn't really process, and Dean maneuvers him to pull his shirt up over his head. It leaves his hair tousled. Dean gives him another kiss just to feel him try to keep up with the movements and fail.

Sam's boxers slip easily past his hips because his cock isn't quite full to the point of hardness, lolling on his thigh when Dean gets the waistband down the curve of his ass. Goosebumps form on Sam's arms, so Dean rubs circles on his belly while he scoots in close, noses promises of warmth into his ribs, and works Sam's underwear a few inches lower. Dean presses an open kiss over the skin just to the side of his hipbone, and Sam arches up into his mouth in sweet, slow motion.

Naked skin under Dean's hands, now, sleep-warm, so _much_ of it. Sam's eyes are glassy and his chest moves slowly, as if he's breathing syrup. Dean draws one of Sam's knees up and to the side. The first touch of the lube at his hole nudges a tiny, wanting noise out of him. Resting his head against Sam's thigh, Dean circles a slick thumb around and around the rim without pushing in and strokes his clean fingers over Sam's calf. "Shh, Sammy, bedtime," he whispers.

Dean feels so sick with arousal he thinks he's been poisoned with it. Sam's eyes keep closing only for him to drag them open again, and there's less awareness in them each time. When Dean slips a finger inside, his lips fall open just like his legs. Dean waits for Sam's eyes to drift shut again before he moves it.

Opening Sam up is usually a chore, so much so that one way or another, they don't often bother, but now his body allows everything Dean tries. More lube, more fingers, and Sam is so far out of it that he doesn't even hide the pleasure on his face when his head falls back. Blood is thundering in Dean's ears. It's too early for the effect to be entirely pharmaceutical. He keeps two fingers inside of Sam as he gets a hand under his back and starts working pillows under his hips, cautiously at first but growing bolder when Sam only tosses his head on the sheets and murmurs.

Dean's dick aches. His ass aches. He feels like a swollen stream and at the same time horribly empty, like if he doesn't get in Sam and get Sam in him he'll die and wake up a wendigo. He needs to devour this boy, but he's so perfect like this it almost hurts even to touch him.

When he slicks himself up and presses against that tight rim, Dean has to shut his eyes to keep from coming right there, but he holds on. He's come too far to leave his brother inviolate.

They both have.

Sam's eyelids flutter against the intrusion, and he makes this sound compounded of pleasure and confusion that Dean will carry with him till he dies. He sinks forever. When he's fully seated, he can only stare with his eyes wide and his heart hammering. "Sammy? Sammy, can you hear me?"

Even now, Sam turns toward the sound of his voice, but that seems to be all he can do. Dean flattens a hand over Sam's belly, feeling for himself there. Too much muscle in the way. He has to draw all the way back and push all the way forwards to feel the motion under his palm.

Sam's body still reacts to him, still rises to Dean's hands and mouth and cock like seeking him is as basic as breathing. He even gives up sweet little noises, from time to time. They're just the ghost of Sam's voice, but more than Dean ever normally gets, when Sam comes at him biting and growling, or silent and thorough, or, worst, asking _is this okay_ , _does this feel good, are you okay_ , like Dean is the SATs, like fucking his brother is just another thing to make sure he does right. Hardly ever lets Dean do this, always washes himself after. Hardly ever sleeps through the night anymore, either. Which means he sleeps in the car, drooling-stupid and idol-perfect inches away from Dean, touchable, but that doesn't matter because when he wakes at Dean's hand on him he's always coming back from somewhere Dean can't reach. Now he's just giving it all up. He's giving up everything, and Dean doesn't even know why.

Dean comes up on his knees so he can watch as his cock lifts Sam's body where they're joined. Watches how Sam's legs splay to either side of his and fucks in long and slow without a hand on him anywhere. Like his cock is a hand. It's an obscene, grotesque image, one Dean keeps under lock and key, and one that never fails to inflame him: a hand, reaching deep into Sam's insides and squeezing.

Part of him expected to be pile-driving Sam by now, and part of him wishes he were, but he's held back from battering himself into his brother's body by the simple fact that he can. Instead he wraps one hand around Sam's back, the other around Sam's dick, and puts everything he has into making this good for Sam. Even when his stomach flutters hard at the way Sam stays limp underneath him, Dean rubs more and more blood into Sam's blunted erection and hoards the half-formed sounds petering out.

Pink cascades down Sam's cheeks and chest, spelling the end even though he has no other tells right now at all. Right on the edge, now. Dean keeps going through the burn in his thighs and wrist until Sam is spilling over his hand, coming in his _sleep_ , filling Dean with something beyond lust and beyond triumph.

Now he abandons the rhythm. He feels Sam's rim squeeze over his length more acutely than he ever has before and rakes his free hand up Sam's back to bury in his hair, thrusting in and pressing, pressing, pressing.

It feels like he comes forever. Dean's never paid particular attention to the quantity of his ejaculate, but this seems enormous. He can feel it dumping out of him without anything seeming to quite empty, and his cock grows oversensitized to the heat and clench even as it stays rooted there.

Dean shudders against Sam's sternum, fighting to collect himself. Part of him misses hands on his back, his face, his hair, thanking him, inspecting. Part of him.

"Sammy?" Sam's head falls back when Dean lifts his neck. "Oh, God."

He can't escape the instinctive fear that comes with seeing Sam unconscious. Somehow, though, it ends up pressing on his groin. He reaches out for Sam's face and forgets what's on his fingers until he sees them leave a smear of come on Sam's cheek.

There's that sick excitement again. It pools in his stomach as he pulls back and watches Sam's body squeeze him out. It seems like a miracle, and an injustice, that nothing leaks. He looks at what Sam left on himself. It's not anything like the amount it feels like he left in Sam, but for an orgasm he wasn't even awake for, it's plentiful enough. Dean reaches back down to Sam's belly, collects the rest of the semen, and, carefully, wipes his soiled palm all down Sam's face.

Dean leans down and inhales. It smells like the bathroom wastebasket when Sam was fifteen. If Dean's hard-on had ever really gone down, this would have brought it back. He licks the come out of Sam's eyebrows until small hairs come free; he cleans the slope of his nose, tongue pressing into his nostrils, opens his mouth as wide as he can over Sam's chin and feels Sam's lips drag over his own and he needs his brother in him.

He just has to get this out of his system, he reasons. It's not something _about_ him, this fixation; it's just something he picked up somewhere, and now he needs to work it off. It's not like Sam will ever know.

All the blood keeping his dick hypersensitive has also set up a sympathetic ache around his rim. Sam's hips are still hoisted on the pillows Dean put there, showing off his dick where it lies tacky and limp. Dean wants it. He sucks Sam into his mouth and crams three fingers into his own ass, needy grunts that he barely even recognizes muffled around his brother's soft cock. The angle's lousy, but Dean couldn't care less. All he cares about is getting Sam's cock hard enough he can fuck it. He pictures Sam in the shower tomorrow, wincing with the soap because his dick's chafed but unsure of precisely why, having no way to know what really happened and not quite able to ask. Dean sucks him and jerks him and tries to get the foreskin to stay down enough to tongue the slit, but just when he thought Sam couldn't deny him, he stays stubbornly flaccid until Dean loses patience, flips him, and drives forward in a spear-stroke of pure frustration. The heat has him gasping. No, that's Sam, and Dean manages to turn Sam's face on the mattress between thrusts so that he can breathe. He's totally dependent on Dean to do even that for him.

"Sammy. Sammy." It's the only word he needs. It means _baby_ , it means _angel_ ; it means _bastard_ and _brother_ and _yours_ and _mine_. Dean feels like he's a thread someone's untwisting between their fingers.

Cheek to cheek, Dean reaches around and under Sam to cup his genitals, which remain pliant. Abruptly, it makes him feel oddly tender: they're just about the only part of him that's still baby-soft. His other hand Dean laces through Sam's slack fingers. Blood thrums in his head, in his neck, behind his navel. He can feel his pulse in his asshole, for Christ's sake. Sam's silent but Dean isn't, whimpering on every thrust.

He curls Sam's arms under his and knocks Sam's knees together between his own, needing to cover every part of him at once. Awake, Sam's body has some elasticity; unconscious, it takes impact like a backstop, so that Dean has to strain to get far enough inside. Sam looks stupid and slack-jawed like this, and it transfixes Dean the way no feminine poise ever has. He's really not sure where Sam gets off angsting about his evil destiny when everything from the food between his teeth to the way he wears out his socks has always had the power to demolish Dean. Rocking into him, Dean can feel himself unraveling into the pull of Sam's body, like Sam is pulling him apart literally without trying, not ready to leave yet, not yet, _not yet,_ and he thought coming your brains out was just an expression and a stupid one at that, except that he is definitely leaving his far up his brother's colon, again.

He pulls out, unceremoniously this time. Sam might as well be dead for all the response he makes. Dean can't believe he didn't wake up from any of that.

Flushed, Dean chucks the pillows toward the headboard, crawls up there, and drags Sam into his arms. He lets his head thunk back against the headboard. His dick twitches, as if to say, "Just give me a minute, I'll be right with you."

Sam's head nods against Dean's pectoral, and Dean cards a hand through his hair to hold him there. He can feel Sam's breaths across the sweat on his skin that way. How young Sam looks keeps kicking him in the teeth. His empty non-expression looks like the trust of a child: not a decision, and so not really trust at all, but a matrix of ignorance and unconscious assumptions.

Was this a decision? Sam mixed drugs like doughnuts and left Dean to make sure he doesn't stop breathing. Does it even mean anything, to put your life in the hands of someone you already know will keep you safe at any cost?

Dean can't think. He needs to get Sam under his mouth. He needs to absorb Sam through his skin. He needs— He doesn't know what he needs, just that it's in Sam somewhere.

When Dean shifts him across his lap, Sam snuffles, light and autonomic, and Dean shuts his eyes against a surge of nausea and need. He slips a hand between Sam's legs to feel his hole. It's a little puffy; he presses a fingertip just inside, and he can feel the nail bed wet with come. He spreads Sam's thighs so he can see.

His rim is bright pink, darkening as Dean plays with teasing out strands of come and pushing them back in. It looks sensitive. If Sam were awake right now, he'd flinch at the little tug where the pad of Dean's finger is tacky. Dean would keep going, much like he is now, and Sam would keep flinching, a little harder each time, until he'd be jerking in Dean's arms without actually trying to get away. Dean would rub circles over the knobby back of Sam's neck with his other hand, and Sam would watch Dean pushing his come back up into his body, breathing ragged and damply through his mouth. Sam's got a dumb fucking mouth, prissy and too thin to pad his teeth, except for his bottom lip where it's full in the very middle and Dean's obsessed with it. He spans Sam's jaw to thumb at it until it's as pink as his rim.

Perfect, stupid, rose-petal mouth. Dean circles over Sam's prostate and knots his fingers in the hair at the base of his skull to bare his throat and make his lips open wider. God, what a stupid mouth. The worst thing is that Dean never gets to properly appreciate how stupid it is, because Sam's always either running it or using it in a full-court press on Dean's own, so that Dean has to fight just to get his teeth in that pink bottom swell. He takes hold of it now between both his own lips, because he can, closing his eyes and just tasting it. He sucks delicately. Finally he lets go to maneuver his head over Sam's open mouth and reaches slowly out with his tongue to touch Sam's. The muscle is passive and yielding, strawberry-red in Dean's mind's eye. He licks it with a blunt, dragging stroke. It still tastes faintly of chamomile.

Dean's head pounds—not with pain, precisely, but with pressure that just won't back off. Sam's asleep and more than asleep. Asleep just for him.

Here's the thing about fucking your brother: all that rivalry that's been there since you first wrestled over the TV remote? It doesn't go away. You get your brother drunk. So he roofies you. He tells you he masturbates thinking about you date-raping him. So you rob a pharmacy. He takes Valium. You take Viagra. He lies there looking like that, the trump card. Sam played him, and Dean knows it, because although he'll never admit it, not even to himself, Sam really does think that he's smarter than Dean. Goddamned Sam, always eating the last bowl of cereal and fucking Dean blind like he thinks he's the only one who's ever hungry. _Anything,_ Sam said, and Dean needs him to regret that. He can't give that kind of permission. It shouldn't be givable.

Dean tucks his heels under himself and hauls Sam's lower body into his lap and over his rigid prick. It's like embedding himself in a heaven made of blood. Blood seeking blood. Dean's an ocean of it, pummeling over all of the blood-warm parts of Sam. Purple will bracket Sam's waist come morning, but it's good, it's perfect, it's just more blood closer to the surface.

Come is mainly what's slicking the way at this point, Dean's come, a holy mess all over the pillows and Sam. Orgasm's a language Dean's body doesn't even speak anymore, and his dick hurts, yet he keeps thrusting until he can't anymore. He pulls out and uses his fingers, lubing up and grinding against that spot inside until Sam is leaking even though the drugs keep him flaccid. A drop of saliva slides from Sam's open mouth to land on the linen.

Dean wants to take a picture. He wants to own a painting of this. He wants to sell tickets and put a bullet in anyone stupid enough to think they can look. He finds the cylindrical lube bottle when his fingers cramp and grips it by the cap, driving it up and in until Sam's ass is leaking and raw and ruined.

Sam coughs and his breathing shifts—shifts deeper, too deep—but he doesn't wake up. Dean made him _come_ and he didn't wake up. No matter what Dean tries, Sam doesn't wake up and Dean's almost angry about it. Angry is easier than terrified. He keeps going until finally something trickles past the foreskin swaddling Sam's soft tip. His prostate will probably be a ball of agony inside him tomorrow, and the load Dean gets is mostly clear.

He slicks it over himself, not with any intent, just to get it on him, but somehow ends up beating himself over Sam's insensate body. It hurts, but his hand just keeps moving. He flashes on coming over Sam's crotch, right over his chubby little cock nestled between its balls, but that simply isn't going to happen. Dean collapses to the mattress. After panting for a minute, he slings himself over Sam's side. There's a far-off _snick_ at the bottom of Sam's breathing; Dean pets at his neck, counting his breaths and counting his heartbeats.

"I gotcha. I gotcha." He presses his lips under Sam's jaw, over his hyoid, over his carotid. He can't seem to stop the undulation of his hips against Sam's flank. "We're gonna be okay. Just don't peek. Okay? Don't peek."

Small contractions start to tug intermittently at Sam's jaw, like maybe he wants to vomit, or speak. He does neither. Dean pulls Sam on top of him, bony, unbelievably heavy. Sam's arms fall to the mattress to either side of Dean's head, and the softness of his junk feels heavenly-soothing against Dean's sore cock. "Shhhh. Shh, shh, shh." He combs through Sam's hair and nestles his chin safely in the space over Dean's shoulder, so he can breathe. With Sam spread over him like this, Dean can feel the slow labor of that breath, long on the way up and long the way down with a terrible pause at the top, warm against his neck. "I gotcha, Sammy. C'mon. Just come on back. Don't look."

Sam's knees landed on either side of Dean's thighs when Dean moved him; Dean slides the sole of one foot over the hairs of one of Sam's calf, curling the toes of the other into Sam's ankle. The joint feels at once fragile and strong. Bone seems like it's always so close to the skin, with Sam.

Under Dean's fingers, Sam's pulse begins to climb. It happens so gradually that if Dean weren't flexing his ass in time to Sam's vitals, plugged into him like he's an undiscovered Zeppelin album, he'd never notice it. Then Sam's limbs shift, no strength behind the motion, but it's to bring them around Dean.

The tiniest shivers are rocking Sam, now. Dean rolls them back over, and Sam's breath hitches exactly the way it used to when they stopped for the night and Dean would pick him up out of the backseat of the Impala. "Hey, hey." Dean presses one of Sam's enormous hands into his armpit. "Don't be cold. C'mere." He tucks each limb in close so he can cover Sam completely. He wants to pull off his skin and stretch it over Sam, make himself into a blanket and wrap him up. If Dean's a river of blood and Sam's a river of blood, then if Dean opens them both up and swirls them together, nothing that's looking for Sam will be able to find him.

There are marks all over Sam: bruises, friction burns, smears, the scratches up his back, a pimple on his chin Dean ruptured with his teeth. They're scrawled between the more indelible marks of moles and scars, Dean's personal annotations to the road map of Sam's life. It offends him that he had permission to make them. Whether it would have been better if he hadn't done it, or if he hadn't had permission, he doesn't know.

Sam makes a sound. It's nothing coherent enough to label, but it's an antecedent to consciousness and it squeezes Dean's heart like a vise. Dean has to warm him up, has to catalogue every bone and blemish. Against what, Dean doesn't know, and Sam can't make him say, no matter what he promised. Exhaustion is waiting for him beyond whatever the hell this is, Dean knows, but right now it can't touch him through the thrum of blood, through how much Dean still needs. He doesn't know what he's waiting for. He doesn't know what will satisfy him enough to end this. He wants to sew himself into Sam's skin, so that everyone who walks by can see that Sam's permanently attached to Dean's freak show. He wants to lock Sam away in some castle where nobody can ever touch him again, not now that Dean's already been. He wants to keep Sam like this forever.

Except that he doesn't, because this isn't even Sam. Sam was never this innocent. Sam does things like go along with it when he knows his brother's getting him drunk, or drug himself and hand himself over without conditions, or go to bed happy because he made the person who needs him most promise to be his executioner. It's possible to prick your finger on a spindle, but you have to really, really try.

Dean's raining sweat on his brother and kissing it off, rocking against Sam's hip, dragging his lips over muscles, tendons, nipples. Sam stirs. Dean cups a hand over his hole, and Sam makes a noise and tries to shift away.

"Sammy?"

His heart flutters when Sam turns his head toward his voice, just like before. The closer Sam climbs to consciousness, the more expressive his face becomes. There's confusion, pleasure, pain. The last one flashes across the others when Sam moves in his sleep, more and more. Urgently, Dean slicks himself up and pushes in, trying to reach far enough in to feel what hurts.

"C'mon, Sammy. Come back to me. You hurt? You're okay. I got you."

Sam's lashes flutter, and his mouth falls open on a sigh Dean wants to catch in a jar. He fists both hands in Sam's hair and buries himself in the smell of him.

He can feel Sam fighting for consciousness around his cock, thighs spreading even as shocky hitches in his breathing betray some amount of pain. It's good. Every reaction he gives up is good, so good. The beautiful flex of his ankle, the ugly scrunch of his nose, the hurt flinch of his abdomen, the gorgeous, slutty part of his legs. It's all unguarded in a way it wasn't even while he was going under, and it feels like someone putting a key in a lock.

For long minutes, Sam stays suspended in the layer between complete unconsciousness and waking, the honey-thick state most deserving of being called sleep. Dean can feel the moment he wakes. His breath stops, and he clenches around Dean. Then he breathes out in a groan, pain from bearing down and something else coloring his voice. Dean forces himself not to soothe the frown that follows with a kiss. It's too late for that to be allowed. He presses his forehead against Sam's, rolling bone against bone. "Sammy?"

 _Sammy_. That one word that means everything: _stay just like this for me_ and _what were you thinking_ and _you're worse than he ever was_.

Sam opens his eyes. There's not much lucidity in them, but they manage to focus on Dean.

 _Sammy, sweet monster of mine._

Sam has to fight to really see him, but he never has to search. One hand shifts on the pillow, like he wants to rub at his face; he closes his eyes as he exhales, and there's clarity in them when he opens them again. Not enough clarity to track movement or take in the room. Just enough clarity for Dean.

Dean thought tonight was about having Sam unconscious, about doing things to him he'd never really know. He had it wrong. This is what he's been waiting for: not the sleep, but the waking.

He shuts his eyes against Sam's temple for a moment. Sam's dick has reacted more to this stimulation than it has since the beginning, but he's not going to be able to come, and neither is Dean. That's fine. Climax stopped being relevant some time ago. Dean's ready to stop; he just needs help figuring out how.

Sam moves his tongue like he's trying to wet his lips with it, but he doesn't quite have the coordination. Dean bends down and does it for him. A faint, probably imagined smile flits over Sam's face. His throat works for a long moment before he manages to whisper, "Dean."

The key in the lock turns.

Dean searches Sam's face while he moves in his body, silently asking for instructions. It's like the beginning: what needs to be done is so mundane and obvious that he just can't see how to do it. _Say you forgive me_ , he might plead, if he could figure out how to make any other words but _Sam_.

Sam licks his lips, a little more successfully this time. Sleep is pulling on him heavily. It will for hours. He reaches, though, finds Dean's hand, and laces their fingers together.

Sam rests his knee against Dean's thigh. His eyes drift closed, and the drugs make his tongue slow. "S'okay. Dean. S'okay."

Dean shuts his eyes, hips stuttering, and with an effort, brings himself to a halt. Sam shudders against him. Carefully as he can, Dean lowers himself until he's lying along Sam's side. The mattress might be kinder, but he can't bring himself to relinquish the contact yet. He thumbs a bit of saliva away from the corner of Sam's mouth that his short speech left behind.

Yeah. It is okay. It will be.

Sam's voice is heavily slurred, but Dean understands him. "Let's go t'sleep."

Dean breathes out. "Okay, Sammy." With a final press of his lips against whatever part of Sam his face is pressing against, he lifts up enough to pull out, wincing both in sympathy with the hitch Sam can't hold back and with the rawness of his own hard-on. He brushes the back of his hand over Sam's stomach in apology.

Sam's fingers curl, barely, around Dean's wrist. In a minute, Dean will get him wrapped up in the funk-free premium linens, prop him up with the hypoallergenic pillows like he deserves. He'll sleep long and deeply. Dean's erection still hasn't gone down, any more than the sedatives in Sam's system have finished with him, but it doesn't matter.

He cleans the worst of the mess off Sam as gently as he dares, both grateful and sorry that Sam's still too out of it to show any embarrassment when Dean moves the cloth between his legs. Sam struggles to help get his boxers back on, pushes Dean weakly away when he comes back with his shirt, and curls on his side with a grimace that soon smooths out. When Dean gets up to find his own underwear, Sam's eyes reopen, and he tries to track Dean across the room until Dean reaches back and squeezes his foot through the covers.

He gets in again beside Sam: right back where they started. Sam's slipped under. Dean flips on the TV on mute without looking at what the channel is and settles in to monitor his brother's breathing.

They'll miss their checkout time, he imagines. That's fine. They could use a break. They haven't had anything you'd call a vacation for a while; Sam since he left Stanford, Dean since before that. The hits just keep on coming, and Sam has a way of making sure they really savor each one. But Dean will hold it together, same as he always does. Dad found a way to leave him a mess from beyond the grave, and Sam found a way to break it worse because Sam is the kind of predictable Dean never sees coming, but they're still here and that's what counts.

He doesn't care what he promised. Breaking promises is what family is for. He isn't ever going to do it, no matter what Dad said, no matter what Sam says.

But if he were going to do it, he'd do it when Sam's asleep.


End file.
